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Whateverstone is More Like It

I’m not sure I know of a character in any book, movie or game who has had their personality and history thrown to the wayside and trampled into the dust as much as Garrosh has this expansion. I mean, in Cataclysm he certainly wasn’t perfect, but he had distinct good points to accompany his flaws, was a good character foil for his mirror image, Varian, and was showing definite signs of growth from his hotheaded, annoying days of being a mad dog yipping at Thrall during Wrath. He wasn’t perfect, but hey, who is? He was a believable character, given his history.

But then it was announced that he was going to be the end villain in Mists, and I guess Blizzard wanted to make EXTRA SURE that we knew he was bad? They’ve made it pretty clear that, oh hey, just in case you haven’t noticed, HE’S EVIL NOW. First there’s Malkorok playing the role of enforcer Gestapo, who literally came from nowhere and STILL feels bizarrely forced and jarring. And of course, the bombing of Theramore, which only goes against every aspect of Garrosh’s honor-driven personality we saw so carefully constructed during Cataclysm and the excellent Shattering novel.

I’m still not really sure how “I would never use a bomb to kill innocents, Krom’gar!” turns into “I’m totes gonna use this bomb to destroy innocents, Malkorok!” I guess that’s character growth, or something?

So that’s been bad enough, and that was even before Mists launched! And it’s only gotten worse. Garrosh in pursuit of evil artifacts. Garrosh sending assassins after his own allies, or abusing them so bad they start thinking of switching sides to the Alliance. Garrosh trying to control the Sha, even as Pandaria is torn apart by their re-emergence and even as his strongest warriors are twisted and slain by the negative energies he’s trying to wield.

Because oh, it’s not like HELLSCREAMS have any important history of being corrupted by evil forces that would make Garrosh think twice about such an act. Nope, not at all.

Anyway, throughout all this I’ve held my tongue, wondering if there was going to be something that made the eventual Siege of Orgrimmar at least semi-palatable to people who actually care about Garrosh’s history. Something that would explain his actions or at least explain why he seems like a completely different person now. But instead, it’s basically just been the complete opposite. I’ll avoid spoilers here (and please refrain from spoilers in comments) but anyone who’s looked at the datamined 5.4 info knows what I’m talking about.

And then, as the final nail in the coffin, someone digs up a bit of 5.4 dialogue between Baine and Vol’jin where Baine says “I should have killed [Garrosh] long ago, when he betrayed my father.” AND NO, THAT’S IT, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. It’s bad enough to throw Garrosh’s personality away. It’s bad enough to make him do things he would never do, and not even explain why he’s doing them. It’s bad enough to turn him into a moustache-swirling tyrant. But now you’re seriously going to ruin OTHER characters, too, just to drive home your point about how ***EVIL*** Garrosh is? This is getting stupid.

Baine isn’t an idiot. Or at least, he wasn’t, but I guess he’s also being re-written now. He knows Garrosh’s axe felled Cairne, but guess what? HE KNOWS GARROSH WASN’T TO BLAME. He, more than anyone else, is well aware that it was Magatha who caused Cairne’s death, not Garrosh. I mean, Baine literally says to Garrosh in the Shattering that the true killer was Magatha. So what the hell?

This sudden “misremembering” of events leaves an incredibly sour taste in my mouth, because a) it’s WRONG, but b) now it just makes Baine look like a moron, or a coward who’s changing his story to fit whatever political side he’s on. Like Baine, buddy, hate Garrosh for what he did to Theramore, hate him for what he’s made your people do, hate him for all sorts of reasons! But not this. Not when you know better, and not when you don’t even truly believe this! Who are you trying to fool?

(This also isn’t helped by the fact that Vol’jin’s speech to players during the Darkspear Rebellion reeks of the same political doublespeak, where someone is presenting a very biased, sketchy account of things just to garner support.)

Then again, maybe history is just being changed! I guess that would explain it. Let’s just blame Garrosh for everything now, yay! Garrosh created the Scourge! Garrosh caused the Sundering! Garrosh crashed the Exodar! Soon everyone will blame Garrosh for everything, and then we can all have good reasons to go merrily cut off his head and live happily ever after.

This all feels like some bizarre bad dream. Garrosh throwing away everything he cares about most (his honor, and the memory of his father), doing a complete 180 and committing the exact acts of mass murder he executed Krom’gar for, and even things like Baine suddenly “forgetting” who was really behind Cairne’s death…it all reads like a bad fanfic.

Or, the vengeful, bitter fantasies of the exiled Magatha Grimtotem, hanging out in some miserable cave and plotting vengeance on the two people who put her there, Garrosh and Baine. And oh hey look, a comic.

Magatha’s expressions in this whole comic are wonderful, as is the cowering Grimtotem underling, afraid to be the bearer of bad news. And — I just noticed — the sadface on the Doomstone as Magatha throws it away! Hahahahaha!

Hmm, I’m not sure if this… failure of Baine’s memory makes me sad or glad that Magatha *isn’t* on the Siege of Orgrimmar boss list. They could have not messed Garrosh (and, on his coattails, Baine) up so much if they’d written a good story about Magatha scheming to tie into the Siege of Orgrimmar. But if they *had* put her in the raid, would it have been yet another goofed up story? Maybe she’ll get a better chance at having a decent continuation for her storyline by *not* being in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, the way that story seems to be shaping up.

I feel like resolving Magatha’s story once Garrosh is gone and out of the picture is such a waste. Garrosh and Baine are her primary story hooks right now, since she must be harboring such a huge grudge against them. Things like ruining Garrosh’s reputation and causing his downfall, sneakily from behind the scenes or subtle manipulation…this is right up her alley. I was hoping Malkorok would be her agent, allowing her to pull the strings, and while it’s still POSSIBLE I suppose…I don’t think it’s very likely.

I guess there’s still Baine afterward, but there’s not that same hatred there. I don’t think she LIKES Baine, but compared to Garrosh, it’s not even close. Baine was taking back his city and avenging his murdered kin, but Garrosh did much worse – he humiliated her.

And this is why I have been avidly reading http://commandboard.wordpress.com/ – the Warchief’s Command Board is Garrosh’s blog. He’s got a cast of supporting characters (some actually in WoW, some not), plays Earth Online, writes poetry, and generally is a believable, realistic character.

I do recommend starting at the beginning, because recent posts are so dependent on what has happened that you have to go a long way back to figure out what’s going on anyway. It’s a long read, but extremely funny much of the time, and doesn’t abuse lore nearly as much as Blizzard does.

Love the expressions, and the camera angle in the first panel is great. The doomstone is adorable, and I have always wondered what happens to Magatha after Thousand Needles…

Command Board is one of my favorite reads. Not only does the author do a fantastic job with the Garrosh personality, making him hilarious but still true to form, but the incorporation of real canon lore events while still maintaining “character” is legitimately impressive.

Metzen is decent at making cool worlds, but horrible at actual stories and character development. There are so many wierd character/story 180s in blizzard games now it’s ridiculous – like Raynor and Kerrigan’s retconned romance that never existed or was even hinted at in starcraft 1 – instead, Raynor swore to kill her. Now he’s pining over her. Ugh… >.<

I’ll give Blizzard some leeway when it comes to continuity/retcon gaffes concerning their earlier games. I mean, it’s been 18 years since Warcraft, I don’t think they really anticipated the huge world they have now. Things like Garrosh though, that’s super recent, so there shouldn’t be any such weirdness there!

A Raynor/Kerrigan romance though…that does seem like a pretty significant plot point to change, considering how important those two characters are. :\

The Raynor/Kerrigan romance made sense to me. I’ve been baffled at the outcry from some sectors. They definitely had some sort of relationship in SC1, but it wasn’t very defined by the story. (Said story was admittedly fairly bare bones, yet very awesome anyway.)

I find it entirely realistic that four years later, after no progress against a human enemy (Mengsk), with dwindling funds and frankly nothing going right, that Raynor would be more inclined to dwell on the good times with Kerrigan than the bad times with the Queen of Blades.

And….uh…am I supposed to say something about Garrosh? Oh. Hmm. Uh, well, the Mana Bomb was dropped on a military target apparently after civilians were evacuated. Is that still at odds with Garrosh’s character in Stonetalon?

This is something I see repeatedly on the interwebs, but the book makes it clear that the non-combatants were evacuated from Theramore before the assault, and the Horde fleet was under orders to let them go.

First, I want to make it clear that I have *not* read the novels, so what I’m about to say could still be wrong. That being said, I think there’s a legitimate explanation here that Blizz could use: sha corruption (bear with me on this!). I’m not certain what the Horde intro quest to Pandaria is, but for Alliance, the first quest chain ends with a Night Elf SI:7 agent (I might be mistaken about him being in SI:7) being twisted by the sha. He was trying to stop the Alliance forces from attacking unarmed Horde-members who were swimming to shore, the other Alliance commander says to attack anyway, and the N-elf suddenly agrees, just as he is visually overtaken by sha corruption.

This has happened all over Pandaria, and it’s basically the entire plot point behind: the Shado-Pan Monastery and Jade Temple dungeons, the Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs raids, and countless quest-lines scattered throughout just about every zone. To be fair, this wouldn’t entirely explain events like the bombing of Theramore, but it’s a workable, reasonable explanation for all the shenanigans Garrosh has been engaged in.

Again, I’ve been actively avoiding spoilers (shocking, I know haha), so I have no idea what explanation Blizz is using. If Blizz doesn’t explain what’s been going on with Garrosh, then I’m with you on your rant, Rades!

I never really liked Garrosh and always thought he was one step away from going mad with power (the dislike was formed when he threw the attack plans in the fire and was a selfish #$@$@ back in BC, and the second opinion cropped up the moment I saw him in Wrath and heard him talking there), but I do agree that his character development has been rather rushed. Apparently Blizz confessed that they had planned one more expansion with him ruling before the expansion where we dethroned him, so there was supposed to be a extra expansion of development, and it really shows.

With that said- I don’t really find anything he does unbelievable. He was racist from day 1, and showed himself so entrenched in his own issues he could never look beyond them outside of ‘orcs’ and ‘non-orcs’. Non-orcs being weak and enemies for the most part. Of course I read a lot of the written material, which does fill in some blanks as mentioned above. (They really need to improve that key lore info in game aspect).

OF COURSE, I play primarily Goblins and Trolls and Draenei. Those are the races that interest me. So from early on I was noticing how he treated those races before all else.

To me he is pretty much the Hitler and Stalin of WoW at this point, and considering at least Hitler was born of crippling insecurity on his part, makes sense. I DO wish that Blizz did… how can I say this. Hm. I guess I wished they showed how completely inexcusable his actions were, apply this to the broader “everyone needs to get their stuff together” theme of WoW to prepare for the Legion, and show how he could have been good but how pursuing dogmatically the strength for ORCS he failed in his blindness to all else.